Magnon was a sort of fashionable woman in the sphere of crime.
She was careful about her toilet.
She shared her lodgings, which were furnished in an affected and wretched style, with a clever gallicized English thief.
This English woman, who had become a naturalized Parisienne, recommended by very wealthy relations, intimately connected with the medals in the Library and Mademoiselle Mar’s diamonds, became celebrated later on in judicial accounts.
She was called Mamselle Miss.
The two little creatures who had fallen to Magnon had no reason to complain of their lot.
Recommended by the eighty francs, they were well cared for, as is everything from which profit is derived; they were neither badly clothed, nor badly fed; they were treated almost like “little gentlemen,”—better by their false mother than by their real one.
Magnon played the lady, and talked no thieves’ slang in their presence.
Thus passed several years.
Thenardier augured well from the fact.
One day, he chanced to say to Magnon as she handed him his monthly stipend of ten francs:
“The father must give them some education.”
All at once, these two poor children, who had up to that time been protected tolerably well, even by their evil fate, were abruptly hurled into life and forced to begin it for themselves.
A wholesale arrest of malefactors, like that in the Jondrette garret, necessarily complicated by investigations and subsequent incarcerations, is a veritable disaster for that hideous and occult counter-society which pursues its existence beneath public society; an adventure of this description entails all sorts of catastrophes in that sombre world.
The Thenardier catastrophe involved the catastrophe of Magnon.
One day, a short time after Magnon had handed to Eponine the note relating to the Rue Plumet, a sudden raid was made by the police in the Rue Clocheperce; Magnon was seized, as was also Mamselle Miss; and all the inhabitants of the house, which was of a suspicious character, were gathered into the net.
While this was going on, the two little boys were playing in the back yard, and saw nothing of the raid.
When they tried to enter the house again, they found the door fastened and the house empty.
A cobbler opposite called them to him, and delivered to them a paper which “their mother” had left for them.
On this paper there was an address: M. Barge, collector of rents, Rue du Roi-de-Sicile, No. 8.
The proprietor of the stall said to them: “You cannot live here any longer.
Go there.
It is nearby.
The first street on the left.
Ask your way from this paper.”
The children set out, the elder leading the younger, and holding in his hand the paper which was to guide them.
It was cold, and his benumbed little fingers could not close very firmly, and they did not keep a very good hold on the paper.
At the corner of the Rue Clocheperce, a gust of wind tore it from him, and as night was falling, the child was not able to find it again.
They began to wander aimlessly through the streets.
CHAPTER II—IN WHICH LITTLE GAVROCHE EXTRACTS PROFIT FROM NAPOLEON THE GREAT
Spring in Paris is often traversed by harsh and piercing breezes which do not precisely chill but freeze one; these north winds which sadden the most beautiful days produce exactly the effect of those puffs of cold air which enter a warm room through the cracks of a badly fitting door or window.
It seems as though the gloomy door of winter had remained ajar, and as though the wind were pouring through it.
In the spring of 1832, the epoch when the first great epidemic of this century broke out in Europe, these north gales were more harsh and piercing than ever.
It was a door even more glacial than that of winter which was ajar.
It was the door of the sepulchre.
In these winds one felt the breath of the cholera.
From a meteorological point of view, these cold winds possessed this peculiarity, that they did not preclude a strong electric tension.
Frequent storms, accompanied by thunder and lightning, burst forth at this epoch.
One evening, when these gales were blowing rudely, to such a degree that January seemed to have returned and that the bourgeois had resumed their cloaks, Little Gavroche, who was always shivering gayly under his rags, was standing as though in ecstasy before a wig-maker’s shop in the vicinity of the Orme-Saint-Gervais.
He was adorned with a woman’s woollen shawl, picked up no one knows where, and which he had converted into a neck comforter.
Little Gavroche appeared to be engaged in intent admiration of a wax bride, in a low-necked dress, and crowned with orange-flowers, who was revolving in the window, and displaying her smile to passers-by, between two argand lamps; but in reality, he was taking an observation of the shop, in order to discover whether he could not “prig” from the shop-front a cake of soap, which he would then proceed to sell for a sou to a “hair-dresser” in the suburbs.
He had often managed to breakfast off of such a roll.
He called his species of work, for which he possessed special aptitude, “shaving barbers.”
While contemplating the bride, and eyeing the cake of soap, he muttered between his teeth:
“Tuesday.
It was not Tuesday.
Was it Tuesday?
Perhaps it was Tuesday.
Yes, it was Tuesday.”
No one has ever discovered to what this monologue referred.